Federal contractors receive billions in public funds despite wage violations; Alabama’s auto industry putting workers’ lives in danger; OSHA delays life-saving silica standard; and Maryland and Nevada legislators approve paid sick leave measures.
Navy shipbuilders get lucrative contracts despite worker safety violations; Baltimore airport executive cited in worker retaliation case; thousands of California workers have potentially harmful blood lead levels; and immigrant workers lose their jobs after joining national protests.
Restaurant workers in California experience severe injuries and disability; OSHA pushes back against a judge’s ruling in poultry plant inspection case; Gov. Chris Christie vetoes a $15 minimum wage bill; and the women making Nike products in Vietnam often earn poverty wages and face grueling production expectations.
Think about all the objects you use every day that are made with pieces of metal. Before that object got to you, a worker in the metal manufacturing industry used a machine to cut, saw, bend and assemble the metal pieces into the countless products that make our lives easier. But sometimes those machines break. And when they do, a simple and inexpensive procedure helps ensure both worker and machine can return safely to the job.
Manufacturing workers in the border city of Ciudad Juárez organize for better working conditions; a stretched OSHA struggles to ensure safe workplaces in Houston; Fight for $15 makes it to the U.S. Capitol; and OSHA investigates the death of a FedEx worker in Memphis.
Environmental Health
As world watches Japan’s nuclear plants, damage to manufacturing infrastructure poses chemical risks
By Elizabeth Grossman After posting yesterday’s story, I began to learn what a hub of chemical-intensive industry the region of Japan most directly affected by the earthquake an tsunami is. Hit with varying degrees of damage from the earthquake and tsunami are more than a dozen major petrochemical plants, most, according to a March 14 […]